Let us introduce to Marcelo and Adriana, they are a couple of brasilians missionaries currently working in Southern Africa. They are UMA’s first partners, and we are very happy to be part of their journey.

Follows their testimony telling about all God has already done in their lives and what He is still doing!

TESTIMONY

“Some years ago, God has called us to perform His works and to leave to wherever the Holy Spirit would guide us to. From this moment many things happened, we had to fully believe and to trust in the Lord because He had asked us to give up our jobs and serve Him.Well, it was very difficult to us, because we had just got married and we had many accounts to be paid and not a few adjustments to do, but God told us once again: “Leave everything and trust only”. We left our jobs, at the time I had three jobs and my wife had two, but obediently we left them, thus God had spoken. Once we left our jobs, the Spirit of God started to wake us up during the nights and we would adore Him and seak the presence of the Lord for hours. In one of those nights, God powerfully said to our hearts the following: “If I take from you everything you have, would you still love Me and be with Me?” and at that moment we said to God: “- Yes Sir, fulfills in us Your will, thus we will always serve You!”. Then, the Lord said that He would take many things from what we had, because He had to change many things in our lives, and teach us to believe and to depend on Him disconsidering what would the matter be or its difficulty, and so it was. We start to lose many things that we gave value, as our car, money and many other corporeal properties each time He asked us to give them away. (I had many watches, they were all gone)

We came up to a point that we had a debt of more than BRZ$30 thousand (around USD$18 thousand) we didn’t even had money to catch a bus. We thank God for that! That’s when we understood the real value of life, His presence, His Daule care, and not what we can see or own. God provided a friend (that is also a brother) to take us to and from the church everyday, we were sent into a “Favela” (“Favela” is the brasilian slum quarters) in order to work there with evangelism (Gospel preaching) and feeding the children who lived there, we received offers Duch as money and other things at that time.

While all these things were happening, God used us in a tremndously way. We received an invitation to go to Africa (Mozambique). How could we go if we didn’t even had the money to take a bus to the church? It was then that we could see God’s hand over us in everything. He started openning the doors and fulfilling His promise. God really was teaching us to fully depend on Him. Many things were changing in our hearts, we found no value on the things the world could provide us, but all we wanted was intimacy with God.

Some days later, it was time to decide wether we would accept going to Mozambique or not, and we chose to go, even it looked imposible to our eyes. We prayed and to asked God to provide us a way to perform this trip if this was His will. (The trip would cost something around USD$7 thousand) We presented the financial obstacles to the Lord and we started to see Him actino in our lives. There were plenty other things going on, and we did not understand many of them, but God knows everything and was molding (teaching) us for everything we would still going to experience. A couple of months befote the trip we didn’t have not even BRZ$1. We placed the whole situation to God and we took that promisse for grant. We declared that we would be in that trip because God was with us. In that very day we received the notice that the leadership of that African Misión centre was giving us 2 scholarships (my wife’s and mine) and that we would not have any extra costs to pay, all we had to do was buying the flight tickets. “GLORY TO GOD” (“Thank´s God!”), the scholarships worth something around USD$4 thousand, we praised God a lot for that. After this day, we started receiving offerings from many people and felt like opening an account to deposit these offerings in order to buy our flight tickets. We shared the number of this account with many people and told them if they were willing to help us they could deposit whatever value they wanted, we saw even more His great hand upon us. The Lord has also tested our hearts and obedience because sometimes when people came to us with their offerings in hands the Lord would tell us to offer those offerings to someone else indicated by Him. We only kept the ammounts that were deposited directily into our Nanking account. But, for the Glory of the Lord, we were faithful and we obeyed, and at the time to pay for the tickets we had all the money.

Well, it’s quite repetitive saying that God had blesses us once more, right? Well, I can’t do anything about it, our God is wonderfull! But, I have to tell that God acted in a such supernatural way moments before checking-in, we did not have much money to take with us during the trip, (not even for emergency or to buy water, that is very expensive there), but God used the life of our pastor to bring us another offering already in the airport, this time already in “dollar” (currency). That money was enough to support we noth during the two months we were there. “God is faithful”.

Well, when we arrived in Mozambique, God used us to do things that we would never imagine we would do back then. God took us to “open” a conference in another city, where I had the privilege to speak the word of God to many people and also to pray for many, what was very good because we saw many miracles from God, and that was something we had never lived before. I also spoke in the Biblical school and also to the children of the center of missions.

After returning to Brazil we had to face new strugles, worse strugles I might say. After almost one year many people had started saying that we should forget about everything (related to the ministry) and go back to our regular jobs as before. We were taken, in that period, by the Lord to another city, “Montes Claros”, in “Minas Gerais” state (Brazil). In this city, we faced many strugles and almost gave up the ministry we were called for, and go back to the regular work. But God didn´t allow us to do such thing. God, in our period of praying, promissed that things would change in our lives because we had remained faithfull even with a little and he would give us control over great things. God spoke very strong in our hearts that we should persist, even though everything was telling usthe opposite, we had to remain in His path.

We stopped listening to people and kept on seaking the face of God, day after day. It was then that God started using us greatly once again, in that period I managed to make an evangelistic trip to “Belém do Pará” and also perform voluntary odontological work there. In an inexplicable way, the Lord kept blessing us and we were able to go on another missionary trip this year (2008), in January, where we stayed for one month in the hinterland of “Sergipe” state. It was a really wonderful time and it was during this last trip that many things started to be defined, we didn’t know what we were going to do after this trip and we didn’t want to stop, knowing that there are so much to do for the “Kingdom”. We started to pray, but during that one month we did not receive any answer related to what we were supposed to do after the project.

God’s work never stops, when it seemed to us that we were stuck, we received a new invitation to be in Africa, but this time in South Africa, to help in the construction of a church and a center of missions for a period of close to one year.

We presented this invitation to God and He said that it was His will that we would accept the invitation. We took ownership of that word and rested in the Lord, finished the month and also our work in the hinterland, we went back to our home and we started to pack our things to go to South Africa.

Many things had to happen in order to this trip became true, but different from the other times we only rested in the Lord and we let Him act, so things were happening. We needed about BRZ$10 thousand (around USD$6 thousand) for this travel and we had only one month to obtain the ammount. We sold out all our furniture and the Lord, for His own Honor and Glory, multiplied the money we got from that. And once more God spilled his love on us, thus not only all our debts were settled but we managed to pay for the flight tickets and got a brand new notebook as a gift so we could communicate with our families and friends back in Brazil. “Glory to the God! God is faithful!!!”.

Well, then we had already the tickets, but now we needed the visas and other sponsors to be able to be all this year out in Africa. We did all we could for the visas from the city we were living (“Montes Claros”), but when we got to “São Paulo”, the consulatetold us that some documents were still missing and that the delay would be around 10 business days (we did not have all that time). Well, we prayed to the Lord and our God, who is the God of ALL the things, and who made the visas available injust one week and didn’t have to pay for that.

About the sponsors, God also brought them and keeps on bringing. We came this far due to the Lord’s Grace and we are grateful to God for everything, we have not written everything, because it would be something “much more” longer.

We have lived each day the suppliment of God in everything, today we are here (in Africa) without having the total ammount that we were informed to be necessary to rent a house, to buy food and etc for the period we will stay here. But, God is supporting (He is our reatest sponsor) and we know that He will continue in supplying everything, until now He has been blessing us and we also believe that He will keep on doing it, since we keep our hearts towards the service of His “Kingdom”.

Today we have a very difficult mission that is to preach the Gospels in a country that has been marked by sufferering, but we believe that we will testify of great signals of God among these people and among the villages which God in taking us.